I want to share with the Breitlingsource members my knowledge about the frankenwatches from SouthAmerica ( I live in Argentina ) Exist a lot of antique wristwatches & pocketwatches in south america because in the first and second War a lot of European citizens migrates to SouthAmerica with a thousands of wristwatches and pocketwatches. They was an excellents timepieces, Patek, Vacheron, Omega, Girard Perregaux, Longines, Breitling , etc After the second war world and until 1960 approx. Argentina was a great Country, the Argentinean citizens and the immigrants had food , money, work, home , cars , etc But after 1960´s ( until today ) SouthAmerica had a bad economy , the governments were very very corrupt, bad , very bad, so, the people was forced to sold the wristwatches and pocketwatches " to live... to have a decent life " This is the important part : In the 60´s , 70´s , for example, one Omega manual wind up movement with solid gold 18k case, it was sold in 200 dollars, 199 dollars for the solid gold 18k case and 1 dollar for the movement, so , the people dissasemble the watch to sold the solid gold case and left the movement in the trash, yes, Vacheron, Patek , Breitling, etc movements to the trash For this reason , today , exist a lot of movements with dial and hands in very bad condition and without the original case Around 1990 ( Im not sure ) until today many watchmakers discovered the high value of this movements and try to restore the dials, hands , clean , oiled , and put the movements in generic swiss cases , creating the famous "FrankenWatch" from SouthAmerica Just for clarify, is my humble opinion , I was talk about FrankeWatches history, not fake watches made by people with bad intention. I hope and wish that is useful my contributione , is a big effort for me write in English, because is not my native language , so, my apologizes for my bad English , If I can help in other matter from here Im at your disposal.
Regards & thanks for all members
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